A judge postponed the highly politicised fraud trial of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Wednesday as it got under way in a provincial court.

Mr Navalny, 36, had travelled overnight by train from Moscow to reach Kirov, 500 miles east of the capital, where he is accused of embezzling 16m roubles (£330,000) from a state timber firm when he was an adviser to the regional governor four years ago.

The activist – who is a lawyer and who led anti-Kremlin street protests in 2011 and last year – was joined by his wife, Yulia, and scores of supporters, including former deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov.

Judge Sergei Blinov adjourned the trial for a week only 40 minutes into proceedings after Mr Navalny's defence team asked for a delay of a month to familiarise themselves with case files.

Vadim Korovin, an opposition activist, had driven from Moscow to join the small crowd of supporters outside the court on Wednesday. "This is a political process, there's no doubt about it," he said, adding that Russia’s opposition should not lose heart in the face of such prosecutions.

Related Articles

“For us activists, for the civil movement, what we need to do now is to not just shout 'Away with Putin!', we need to show the people that we can do concrete things to help them. Gandhi was right when he said, ‘If you want to change something, then start with yourself.’”

A small number of anti-Navalny demonstrators also gathered, shouting "A thief should be in jail".

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Navalny said: "I'm not going to say some banal phrases about the case being falsified and fabricated because I've put all the materials on the internet. I think any person, even without a legal education, can make certain of that."

A senior official from Russia's Investigative Committee, the body investigating serious crimes, said last week that Mr Navalny's prosecution had been "speeded up" because he "teased the authorities".